Leila Atassi, Northeast Ohio Media Group

About Me:

I have been a reporter for more than a decade and now cover Cleveland City Hall for the Northeast Ohio Media Group, representing The Plain Dealer. Feel free to contact me at 216-316-6788 or latassi@cleveland.com. You can also follow me on Twitter -- @LeilaAtassi.

Hi, echo810. I'm the reporter who wrote the above story and is covering this race. The following links will take you to more information about all five candidates and a couple of the debates. I hope this helps.

Hi, dkb5. I'm the reporter who wrote the above story and covered Anthony Sowell's trial last summer. You are correct that police did not have missing person reports on file for most of the women whose remains were discovered in Sowell's home. But family members of many of those victims testified at the trial that they TRIED to file such reports with police and were turned away because the women were known addicts with histories of disappearing for stretches at a time. These families described for jurors the months they spent searching and posting their own flyers in the neighborhood.

One victim's son, who had just returned from a military tour of duty overseas when his mother went missing, said the police did take a missing person report -- but when he called months later to check on the status of that investigation, the police said they had no record of it. This particular young man was training to become a police officer himself and knew many of the investigative techniques that should have been employed to find his mother. He testified that he called the jails, the morgues and the homeless shelters himself and spent many nights interviewing people in the neighborhoods that his mother would frequent.

I hope that clarifies the facts of the case. Thank you for your comment.

Dear Readers,
I am the reporter who wrote the above story. Just a point of clarification: The term "reverse discrimination" is widely recognized and used in both academic and legal circles to describe discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group -- especially when resulting from policies established to correct discrimination against members of a minority or disadvantaged group. Some describe it as the adverse effect of affirmative action policies on the majority.

The subject and controversy surrounding it have been widely studied and explored in social research, books and position papers. No doubt, many argue the phrase is antiquated and should be replaced by the label "discrimination." But that does not illegitimize its usage to describe a specific form of discrimination.

Thank you for your feedback on the topic. I assume at least one comment was deleted for its personal attack on me because I don't see it posted. So if you wish to direct your comments to me, feel free to call me at 216-999-4549 or email me at latassi@plaind.com, and I will be more than happy to discuss the subject further or provide links to information that could be helpful.

Sun of Selfrealization, thanks for your questions. The company that has been retained to digitize the files is called SC Strategic Solutions. One of the company's managers testified during the hearing that the project will likely cost between $100,000 and $500,000. However, it's unclear how East Cleveland Schools will afford the pricetag, given that the district has been struggling in a state of fiscal emergency for a few years.

Needless to say, Judge Ambrose has said he has no intention of holding up Sowell's trial for the record digitizing project.

Thank you for your follow-up questions, grace111. I'm one of the reporters on this story.

As of the time the commission released its report, the city's sex crimes unit had 10 active detectives and three supervisors. And at any given time a detective has approximately 30 open cases. As far as we are informed, no new detectives have been added to the unit since the commission published its findings.

The city does not have a unit devoted to the investigation of missing persons. Rather, one detective in each of the five police districts adds that district's missing person caseload to their duties. A liaison (who is newly stationed at the Fusion Center as descibed in the story above) coordinates the input of information into a national database for missing persons.

Interesting note from the commission report:
"Discussion with interviewees often focused on the question of whether there should be a missing persons unit. Several interviewees liked this idea because it could potentially centralize and streamline missing persons information, allowing patterns and trends to be identified. However, other interviewees expressed concern that a missing persons unit would remove detectives familiar with neighborhoods and residents from the process of searching for a missing person and that this would cause a greater disconnect between the police and the community."

I hope that answers your questions and provides some clarity. Thanks again for your interest in this issue.

Hi, cardioau. Thanks for your comment and your feedback on our Essa coverage. Good observation. There have been several stories in which the defense team's arguments took center stage in our coverage of this trial. For example, the lawyers grilled, Jamal Khalife, the man who harbored Essa in Lebanon, undermining his credibility by drawing attention to his criminal background. And they dug deeply into the FBI agent who worked on the case, asking about securing the testimony of some witnesses in exchange for consideration in their own pending criminal cases.

However, in some testimony, nothing new is revealed during the cross-examination of witnesses, and Essa's attorneys ask questions seeking clarification.

In Eva McGregor's case, the defense lawyers did NOT cross examine her at all, and therefore didn't make it into today's story.

But stay tuned. The defense team promises about a dozen witnesses of their own as early as next week!

Hi, and thanks for reading! Yazeed Essa told police that his wife had been taking calcium on his recommendation for one to two weeks before her death. But he said she didn't take it as regularly as he wanted her to.

I'm the reporter who has been covering this trial. Thank you for your interest.... However, I just wanted to provide a new piece of information that relates to your comment. Today (Tuesday, 2/9) a crime lab fingerprint analyst testified and said the contaminated pills were dusted for fingerprints. But only three of them revealed partial prints, and they were not substantial enough to identify their source. Also, the pill bottle -- which had been touched by as many as a dozen people before authorities collected it -- was never dusted for prints, according to the expert, who will continue his testimony Wednesday.

Hi, folkster2. I'm the reporter who wrote this story. Thank you for your interest and feedback. I appreciate your comment about the comparison between a private investigator and CPD. That was exactly the point I tried to illustrate.

Heading into the reporting process I wasn't exactly sure how one would go about searching for a missing person, even if they had the time and resources necessary to do it. By describing Lauth's work, I was not trying to criticize a cash-strapped city for not having those resources at its disposal. Rather, I found it important for readers to understand the spectrum of strategies that could be used to find missing persons -- and what could be possible when someone's time and money is devoted to the effort.

Thank you again for your thoughts on this subject. This kind of public discourse is what fuels our planning for future stories.

Hello, and thank you for your interest in this story. You can contact Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason's office main line at 216-443-7800 and ask for Paul Soucie, the assistant county prosecutor handling the case.

Hi, this is the reporter who wrote the above story. Thanks for reading! ... To clarify, county prosecutors said that those who raided Kratochvil's home earlier this year took precautions because they heard he could have been armed. However, according to prosecutors, no guns were found in Kratochvvil's home.

For those readers interested in the outcome of Judge Daniel Gaul's discipline case, the hearing, which began last week, is on hiatus until Nov. 11. It will resume in Columbus before the same disciplinary panel. Stay tuned for further updates.

Hi, readers. Thank you for the thoughtful discussion on the ODOT corruption case. Just to round out our coverage and give you guys a better feeling for what lies ahead for these defendants.... Prosecutors have said that these guys essentially are small fish in the investigation of what they suspect was a very large and complicated criminal enterprise operating out of the ODOT District 12 office. These defendants represent the first of multiple waves of indictments. And all have agreed, as part of their plea deals, to help take down the main targets, prosecutors said.

The full descriptions of how some in this first wave contributed to the corruption are detailed in previous stories. But generally, many of them admitted submitting false bids on projects to help steer work to other companies. Prosecutors say they were cogs in the machine. But they weren't the kingpins who reaped the real benefits on the taxpayers' dime.

Stay tuned for those indictments and to see how all of this pans out. The Inspector General's report (linked in the story) is sordid and interesting, and I have no doubt the trials will be, too.

Thanks for reading. I invite you to become a follower of the court beat by clicking on my byline at the top of the story.